About Heroes

The not-too-common but done often enough trend of anime between-the-movie filler content continues with this month's release of the Gotham Knight DVD. Much like it's predecessors, like the Matrix animes and those Van Helsing / Chronicles of Riddick animated DVDs, this is not essential viewing material for the movie, but is it something you're going to want to watch if you're a Batman Begins fan, foaming at the mouth in anticipation for the Dark Knight in just a few short weeks.

This collection of shorts, all done by different artists / crews, bridges the gap between Begins and Dark Knight, showing a bit of the Batman cracking down on those ever-present cowardly superstitious types in his not-so-fair city of Gotham. They do a good job of throwing in some goodies here and there to keep things interesting, because what is Batman without his Rogues gallery? Aside from the usual mobsters and thugs, we're treated with appearances from Scarecrow, Killer Croc and Deadshot. It's cool because these are characters that just wouldn't fit in the world of the new Bat movies. It's sort of a way comic nerds can have their cake and eat it too, since the Begins movies are just too deeply rooted in reality to have a guy like Killer Croc running around in them.

So actually getting down to the critique, this is a pretty enjoyable package they're offering up here. Multiple different takes on the Dark Knight, whether it be from skater kid bystanders, Gotham Cops, or the Bat's own perspective, you really do come out of this with some more background on the man behind the mask. And speaking of representaton of character, they brought back the only man to ever truly capture the voice of the Bat perfectly (in my opinion, but I know I'm not alone here,) Kevin Conroy. Also, the essential man behind the Bat-toon, Bruce Timm is back in the Producing chair. If you're new to the animated aspect of the Batman, I'll just lay it down for you and tell you, it's hard to do wrong with those two on-board. That being said, I feel this could have been better, but it isn't bad. This could be due to unfair judging on my part, but I'll let you decide for yourself.

The format of this collection of shorts is what really holds me back from giving it a solid thumbs up. Since they decided to make it a collection of shorts by different people, they don't really do the story aspect that well. It's just a bunch of one-two punches here and there in different scenarios. The stories don't all add up to something. They bleed into each other a bit here and there, but no story has a feeling of a completed story arc at the end of it. Now, again, this could be an unfair judgement because it isn't meant to be the next movie itself, it's just a glimpse at what happens between the movies. Either way, just because it didn't give me a warm "Story Over" feeling in my tummy when it was all said and done doesn't mean that the journey from beginning to end wasn't a fun one.

This movie had some fun moments, whether it be kids' overactive imagination portraying Batman as a Robot, Spirit, or actual Man-Bat creature, or just watching the Bat take on villains like Croc, Scarecrow and Deadshot while jacking up mobsters and hoods all over the place, helping out Lieutenant Gordon and getting help from Lucius Fox. This movie is worth dropping that hour and a half of your life that you'd otherwise spend sitting on your couch watching an CSI marathon or whatever. The scenes that really make it are when Croc and Bats meet up and have it out and then when the Bat takes on Deadshot. There's gold in them scenes, kids. Anyway, long story short, I give this a B-, It's definetly worth a watch, just don't buy it. Do what my friends and I are gonna do. Get tickets to the midnight screening of the Dark Knight, rent this, and then before you all go to the movie, set aside a few hours to all get together and re-watch Begins, then watch this,then get you jollies in the theater watching what reviews are already calling one of, if not the best movie of the summer. Happy watching kiddies. Until next time!